Sexual Ethics in Islam by Kecia Ali Read Free Book Online Page A

part of the structure of gender-differentiated marital claims beginning with dower and carried through to divorce. Though the questioner posed the problem of “either of the two spouses
    10 sexual ethics and islam
    [denying] the natural rights of the other” as a gender-neutral one, sex in marriage is not a gender-neutral question. Ibn Jibreen opens by accepting his questioner’s premise of parity, declaring that “sexual relations” are among the “needs” of both husband and wife, but proceeds very quickly to discuss men and women in parallel, and then to differentiate them. Eschewing the view that women’s desires are unmanageable, he opines that men generally have “a stronger desire” for sex than women. The rest of the fatwa considers men’s sexual claims in marriage, then women’s sexual claims in marriage, lastly returning to universal statements about sex in marriage.
    The limited and contingent sexual rights of a wife stand in contrast to the unrestricted right of a husband to sex “when- ever he desires it.” With the caveat that a man may not harm her or prevent her from performing any of her religious duties, Ibn Jibreen declares that a wife has“an obligation ... to allow her hus- band to have sexual intercourse with her whenever he desires it.” (Note the passivity here: she is to “allow” him “to have sexual intercourse with her,” rather than actively having sex with him.) Ibn Jibreen accurately categorizes this as the dominant, virtu- ally unanimous, view of the Muslim jurisprudential tradition. Like al-Ghazali, who supports the wifely obligation to be avail- able to her husband in a passage less often quoted by modern Muslim authors, 34 Ibn Jibreen recognizes that a wife also “has rights to have her intimate needs fulfilled.” However, a husband is not obligated to satisfy her “whenever” she “desires it;” rather the husband must “have sexual intercourse with his wife (at least) once in each third of the year, if he is able to do so.” 35
    A number of hadith that make assertions about wives’ sexual obligations serve as proof for this husbandly right; although Ibn Jibreen does not cite them in this fatwa, they appear in other opinions issued by the Saudi fatwa council with which he is affiliated, as well as the writings of other thinkers. Abu Huraira is the authority for five closely related narrations in the two Sahih s of Muslim and Bukhari. Muslim reports three statements by the Prophet associating the husband’s displeasure with divine displeasure in a chapter entitled “It is not permis- sible for a woman to abandon the bed of her husband:”
    marriage, money, and sex 11
    When a woman spends the night away from the bed of her husband, the angels curse her until morning. 36
    By Him in Whose Hand is my life, when a man calls his wife to his bed, and she does not respond, the One Who is in the heaven is displeased with her until he (her husband) is pleased with her.
    When a man invites his wife to his bed and she does not come, and he (the husband) spends the night being angry with her, the angels curse her until morning. 37

    Bukhari’s two traditions attribute similar words to the Prophet:

    If a man invites his wife to sleep with him and she refuses to come to him, then the angels send their curses on her till morning.
    If a woman spends the night deserting her husband’s bed (does not sleep with him), then the angels send their curses on her till she comes back (to her husband). 38

    Details in these Prophetic hadith vary. In three of the five, the husband invites his wife to bed; the other two do not mention an invitation, only that she remains away. In all but one version, the angels curse the woman till morning or until she returns to her husband’s bed; in the last, God is directly “displeased until [her husband] is pleased with her.” These vari- ations do not affect the central point, which is that women’s sexual duties to their husbands are a matter